Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will shut down for good at the end of the year.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the launch of Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMO, but there's no celebrating being done. Instead, the team announced that the game will be closed down in three months, when Mythic's Warhammer license expires.

"We here at Mythic have built an amazing relationship working with Games Workshop creating and running Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning over the last 8 years," Mythic announced today. "Unfortunately, as with all licensing deals they do eventually come to end and on December 18th, 2013 we will no longer be operating Warhammer Online."

"Games Workshop has cultivated a world class IP. We were lucky enough to play in their universe for nearly a decade, with five great long years live," Producer Carrie Gouskos wrote in a separate "notice of shutdown" farewell message. "However, like all things - our contract has come to an end. Both Games Workshop and Mythic agreed to part ways, despite how hard it is emotionally on us to let the game go. It has been a tremendous honor to work with Games Workshop and even though we may be parting ways, our relationship with them remains strong."

I have no idea how popular Warhammer Online is (or isn't) but the announcement of the coming closure is the first news to be posted on the Warhammer website since the June 17 announcement that six-month time codes and automatic renewals were being eliminated. The timing of that news now seems rather suspect, coming as it did exactly six months before the shutdown date, but Mythic said at the time that the change was due to "very low" levels of interest.

There goes another World of Warcraft killer, just like all the rest, quietly, whimpering with it's tail between it's legs.

It's a shame for Mythic, but quietly impressive that it's lasted five years when so many subscription MMOs have caved in on themselves within a year or two (or a month or two in some cases). Hope they get something else to work on.

When you take your time in the game, it's clear that the people over at Mythic did spend a lot of time and thought with the creation of the game.

It was solid, not many bugs, servers stayed up longer without crashes and the launch itself was good.The fundamental works and it innovated in areas such as public questing and the "tome of knowledge".

But when I heard SEGA had got the rights to Warhammer from Games Workshop and when Wrath of Heroes out of nowhere shutdown.I knew the time was ticking on this rough gem.

People will remember this game as a failure.I will remember it as a solid title with unlimited potential.

This game had so much potential...but they kept ruining it. I don't even know where to begin with the problems the game had...the longest running was people 'camping' in the world pvp areas but in the protection of super guards, causing the enemy team to be considered to be facing 'more' people than they were, thus giving them more and more reward for overcoming greater odds, even though they technically outnumbered the people actually playing...it led to an unending escalation in power for the side that had fewer afkers and more actual players that made the other side pretty much FUBAR.

If they had of incorporated all the public quests and dungeons into the PvP world as a side note and instead focused all their budget on making the best sieges/open world pvp possible, this game could have been something amazing.

Instead, they seemed to make little, if any good changes after release, and just kept releasing more shitty PvE dungeons for people who had reached cap to grind on. Meanwhile sieges and faction keep battles (what the game was supposed to be about) were boring as sin. And don't even get me started on the terrible class balancing.

For all its faults though, was still the most fun MMO I've ever played and the only MMO to have ever had REAL Oceanic servers. Ever since this, I simply cannot play MMO's on US servers anymore. Having 29 ping in an mmo was just too amazing to go back to 200 -_-

(Of course they stuffed up that awesome gesture too by releasing with 8 odd Aussie servers when we only needed like 3 which watered down the population on release)

Still, the game will live on in the numerous other games that have since emulated its public quest system so least it achieved something of note.

llagrok:Mythic didn't stand a chance in the mmo-game after EA basically crippled them from the get-go.

Rip in peaces.

Mythic itself was losing money fast.They wanted to be brought by someone.

If someone hadn't brought them, Mythic wouldn't be around and Dark Age of Camelot would have shut down and Warhammer Online wouldn't have come out in the first place.

EA was the only one who showed interested.Naturally EA did fire people and Mythic is now a shell of its former self, but at first EA did let them do things with Warhammer Mythic's way for like the 1.5 years of its life.

And Dark Age of Camelot is still around and still getting updated.

So EA isn't fully to blame for all this.Even this shutdown is a result of Gamesworkshop, not EA pulling the plug.

All I know is that I remember getting into the early stages of beta for this, and testing it hard, figuring "ok there are issues but this is a beta, thats the point." Those issues never got fixed, ever, you would report major bugs and literally months later, they would still be there, some were still there when the game went live. The game was rushed, never really tested properly, the pvp was fun-ish but nothing ever felt like it had that full layer of polish on it. Like many other MMO's, so much potential, so much failure, surprised it lasted this long really.

Will give the game props for two things : 1)The chicken mechanic, if you were an overlevelled toon who went back to a newbie zone to do some ganking... you turned into a chicken. and 2)Lady Godiva, love a game that gives you an achievement for riding through town naked.

I only played the game for a short while and it had plenty of issues but I'll always think players being unable to run through one another was a brilliant touch, it added another layer of strategy to gameplay that I have never seen replicated since; Black Orc Shield Walls rocked.

Huh, I thought this game had shut down years ago. It was the last MMO my friends and I tried to play together after entering college, and I remember that we ultimately quit playing after the free month because while the PvP was really fun, the lack of any substantial PvE content that was there to do, beyond to fill the time between PvP queues, was pitiful. Since the game's focus was outright stated to be PvP we didn't expect that aspect of the game to improve, so my friends quit playing and I went back to WoW for Wrath.

This was the last blind purchase of an MMO I ever made. I didn't know how the game played at all, but got it anyway because they hyped it so much... turned out to be a linear mess of half-assed good ideas and ripped off of WoW too much. I canceled my subscription before my free month was up.

Original IP games out last most others(bar maybe star trek online, she just keeps fighting). Got the speicla ed of Warhammer online - the figure is still pride of my small orc army :) but alas the game was too pvp driven and was a bit of a wow clone. Shame I enjoyed it for a bit but it was alas a flawed gem.

Warhammer Online was my textbook case study on how to take a great game and screw it up in the last 20%.

The first ten levels of WAR were fantastic, they grabbed interest, they were fun, dynamic, flowed well and had tons to do.

The next ten levels introduced new levels of complexity to the PVP and PVE elements of the game, and while the story elements started to drop off, you still had that sense of urgency and immediacy that made the RVR aspect of the game feel relevant.

The next ten levels were where things started to bog down a bit, classes became less balanced, bugs started to show up with more frequency, the PVE dungeons were frequently semi-functional at best.

And the last ten levels is where the entire game pretty much went to shit. Nothing worked right, class balance went largely out the window, the PVE dungeons were broken, the RVR systems didn't work, and the server infrastructure simply wasn't adequate to the task.

Mythic might have been able to pull it out if they'd done one thing right at the beginning, and one thing right at the end.

That first thing? Ensure faction balance not just in class abilities, but in player populations. There were supposed to be systems in place to offset severe outnumbering, but on my server, Destruction outnumbered Order so badly that when all the Destro players showed up for a siege, they'd crash the zone they entered. Admittedly, Order had fantastic coordination; we got all the best and brightest of the various guilds to coordinate into a single massive assault, each guild with specific objectives, all set to go off at a particular time.

We almost won that particular stage, until Destro just showed up and swarmed every single group down simultaneously.

The balance was often disputed, but it ranged in theory from 3-1 all the way to 5-1. Mythic wouldn't tell us, and the player-gathered metrics weren't exactly reliable. But people knew, and a lot of them just stopped playing as a result. Ironically, a lot of the Destro players quit when they realized that because the servers couldn't handle the sheer mass of their zerg, they'd never be able to actually get to the proper RVR endgame.

The thing they could have done right at the end was made damned sure that the endgame PVE dungeons worked. That would have given them time to work out the kinks in the RVR system, rebalance classes, and do all the little fiddly bits that should have been done in the beta but weren't. So long as people would have had something to do, they might have been able to salvage the game.

As it was, they went on to screw up by the numbers for a few more years. Last time I looked at WAR, the game had gone from dozens of servers to around four.

Draconalis:Granted the game wasn't in a fit state, so contract renewing wasn't worth the effort... but something that catches my attention here... could this happen to any licensed MMO?

Could I be playing a sprawling healthy licensed MMO, then one day it all ends because the two companies come at odds with each other?

It's a disturbing thought... in the same vein as gaming becoming a license rather than a property.

In my opinion, this is why you should demand private server support when a MMO is near its end or is closing. Private servers might be out of the hands of the company, and there might be some dishonest things that happen in them, but considering the kind of data they can store server-side and the disclaimers they can put on private servers it's not an entirely big issue. Secondly, they can cut costs just though private server support, and I bet the community as a whole would be a lot calmer and an individual player would be more able to find the right kind of server for them instead of being limited to ten to fifteen public servers in their region, all of which hold different kinds of players, and ultimately create a kind of first impression that doesn't go away for a very long time - If a new player logs in at the wrong place and the wrong time, and spawn amongst the wrong kind of people, that player isn't going to stay very long.

Brilliant PvP game but was crippled from the outset by lack of release content and the way they didn't follow the DAoC model more. Could of been so much more than it was if funded more and they delivered what they promised.

Also doesn't help that GW has already contracted Creative Assembly to make the next couple of Warhammer Fantasy Battle games. By waiting until the death date for WAR, no need for CA or GW to fret over EA legal team.

Sad really it was a fun game , But then they screwed it up and ppl fell off in droves.it was not Star wars G bad but close to it. But a guess the fanboys that defended the update have hade fun for 2-3 years all 4 of them.

The sad part is that that will probably be how it's remembered, even though it really wasn't. Several of the innovations that are now big boasting points for new MMOs claiming to be doing new things actually came from WAR. Open quests that you just walk into without needing groups or a quest giver - one of the major selling points for Guild Wars 2 and Rift, seen first in WAR. Several of the combat mechanics that go beyond simply using up mana or its equivalent to use skills in both those games were also done first in WAR. Guild Wars 2 even effectively has the chicken mechanic, just done in a better way. As others have noted the game was far from perfect, but it was much more than just another WoW clone.

Everything is fine, any perceived balance issues are just in players heads and they should stop bitching... we have the metrics.. you are wrong... and theres something awesome we gonna reveal just around the corner.

The fact that they never walked around said corner speaks for itselfe.

Mythic was arrogant and had no clue what the hell they where doing.

In the first 6 months they lost nearly all of their millions of subscribers.

Till today i will not understand why they didnt made the game free 2 play completly instead of this nonsensical tier 1 chaos vs imperium free4ever crap.

Also the game was beautifull... it catched the look of the warhammer table top game perfectly... it had so much potential that i bought the friggin collectors edition...

Wich now has a premiere place on my shelf looking down at me mockingly so ill never do the same mistake ever again. Right next to my alone in the dark collectors... sometimes you need to be told twice T_T

Played it for a few months. Not enough PvE content to keep my intrest, but it was the first and only MMO where I actually enjoyed the PvP somewhat.Thought it was long since dead though. Popped by with a trial account two years ago, or something, and apart from the trial accounts playing around with low level pvp there was not much else going on.